Meenakshi Shedde: Land of Jain Chicken

IllustrationUday MohiteAny city that offers gotisoda gets top marks in my book Ahmedabad has gotisoda those lovely soda bottles with a blue marble in the neck of the glass bottle on its highway leading to Patan for instance It is also the land of Jain Chicken You guessed right chicken without onion and garlic Very Ahmedabad You can also get an Icecream Sandwich I havent yet had a chance to find out if it is a trueblue ice cream sandwich with a slab of ice cream between two slices of bread like they have in Indonesia which the locals eat with delight licking the ice cream as it dribbles down the squishy bread to their elbows The city also has a Passport Hanuman temple in Khadia packed on weekends where you pray for your passport or visa to come through in timeId been invited by Prof Kandaswamy Bharathan to lecture at the Indian Institute of Management IIMAhmedabad on The Changing Role of Film Festivals From Script to Screen This was for a postgraduate management course called Contemporary Film Industry a business perspective which he describes as the first comprehensive course on the business of movies to be taught in business schools in the country Previous guest lecturers include Aamir Khan Karan Johar and actors R Madhavan and Dhanush The IIM campus has exhilarating iconic buildings designed by American architect Louis Kahn red brick buildings with enormous geometric motifs holes arches and rectangles in the walls that cheerfully invite light air the sky and trees inside the building even as they keep the buildings cool and ventilated The library is at the heart of a sprawling set of buildings that connects the professors rooms classrooms and student living quarters in one seamless spaceTravelling to Patan and Modhera I ask the young tourist guide accompanying me a Hindu about 26 what he thought about the Gujarat riots of 2002 in which over 1000 were killed the majority of them Muslims The end result peace was good but the means to achieve this wasnt right he says Their family in the paper business incurred losses because of the riots as their key suppliers were Muslims There was a restaurant run by a Muslim near my house that was set on fire during the riots and for six days no one dared to even go in take the owners corpse out and bury it He said Muslims mostly continued to live in the old city and it is difficult for them to get a house in the new city because Hindu residents will insist on giving flats only to vegetarians But another Ahmedabad resident told me she is very pleased to see Muslims including women at malls and salons in the new city and confidently mentioning their names at the doctors not hesitant as they once were to indicate their identityAt Modheras 11th century Sun Temple built by King Bhimdev is the spectacular kund a step well with geometric patterns whose designers revelled in the shadows cast on the stone steps by the sun as it travelled across the sky Inside the temple the sanctum sanctorum is empty with the main statue missing But on its carved pillars there are all kinds of acrobatic amorous couples threesomes and gang mischief and even a woman and animal kissing Let me just say this is a Gujarat you wont see in the government advertisements for the state nor will those frothing at the mouth over Padmavat have the courage to acknowledgeMeenakshi Shedde is South Asia Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival awardwinning critic curator to festivals worldwide and journalist Reach her at meenakshisheddegmailcomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai National and International news hereDownload the new midday Android and iOS apps to get updates on all the latest and trending stories on the go